DOCSLIB.ORG

THE IMPACT of EUGENICS on SPECIAL EDUCATION in 1930S SAN FRANCISCO

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
THE IMPACT of EUGENICS on SPECIAL EDUCATION in 1930S SAN FRANCISCO THE IMPACT OF EUGENICS ON SPECIAL EDUCATION IN 1930s SAN FRANCISCO Margot W. Smith, Dr.P.H. February, 2008 1 THE IMPACT OF EUGENICS ON SPECIAL EDUCATION IN 1930s SAN FRANCISCO Margot W. Smith, Dr.P.H. Abstract In the 1930s, about 2% of San Francisco’s children were diagnosed as intellectually disabled and placed in special education or institutionalized. Most of the children were of Italian descent. Teachers, physicians, psychologists and social workers authorized their placement in San Francisco’s special education classes, specified the training that the children were to receive, and on occasion, referred children to Sonoma State Hospital for institutionalization. As professionals, they followed State mandates for compulsory education and were influenced by the prevailing philosophies of the time -- eugenics and social Darwinism. Pupils who fell behind in school were sent to a psychologist for individual testing; the child’s 1916 Simon-Binet IQ test score was an important part of the diagnosis. The school psychologist, Olga Bridgeman and the head of special education, Louise Lombard had been trained to use the IQ test by Henry Goddard of Vineland School. The Sonoma State Hospital was headed by Fred Butler who took great pride in his sterilization program. A question asked in 1964 was where did they all go as adults? They were no longer considered intellectually disabled. A follow up study in 1984 partially answers that question. 2 THE IMPACT OF EUGENICS ON SPECIAL EDUCATION IN 1930s SAN FRANCISCO Margot W. Smith, Dr.P.H. In 1964, the White House Conference on Mental Retardation noted that far fewer people over the age of twenty were identified as "mentally retarded" than there were in the 1930s; its report called them the “disappearing retardate.” (U.S. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1964) How did this happen? In San Francisco, these disappearing retarded adults were children in the public schools of the 1930s. How they as children were diagnosed and educated in their special education classes may provide some insight into their disappearance. In the 1930s, about 2% of San Francisco’s children were diagnosed as intellectually disabled and placed in special education or institutionalized. Teachers, physicians, psychologists and social workers authorized the placement of children in San Francisco’s special education classes, specified the training that the children were to receive, and on occasion, referred children to Sonoma State Hospital for institutionalization. As professionals, they followed State mandates for compulsory education and were influenced by the prevailing philosophies of the time -- eugenics and social Darwinism,. Prior to the 1937 intelligence test revision by Terman and Merrill, 1916 Simon-Binet IQ test scores were an important part of the diagnosis. Pupils who fell behind in school were sent to a psychologist for individual testing. However, from the beginning of intelligence testing, professionals were faced with the problem of stigma. The terms used by Henry Goddard and Lewis Terman were idiot, those with IQ of below 24, imbecile, 25 through 49, moron, 50 to 69, borderline from 70 to 79, and dull, 80- 89. (Terman, 1919) When tests were used in the school setting, teachers found it difficult to tell parents that their child was an imbecile or to obtain parents’ consent to place a child in a class for morons. From the l870's on, euphemisms were developed to soften the diagnosis. These were, in rough chronological order, dullards, laggards, pupils of poor scholarship, the motor-minded, more suitable for manual training, not book-minded, hand-minded, motor types, feebleminded, backward, abnormal, subnormal, atypical, mentally defective, mentally deficient, oligophrenics, opportunity pupils, ungraded pupils, special, over-age, exceptional, mentally handicapped, mentally retarded, and now, intellectually and developmentally disabled. The American Association on Mental Retardation changed its name to the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD) in 2007 and soon after changed the diagnosis in its scholarly journals and general usage to intellectual disability. San Francisco children in the 1930s attended a city school system that was proud of its modem methods and its provisions for children who fell above and below the norm in mental ability. Psychologists, social workers, teachers and other professionals believed that they were using the most advanced methods for diagnoses and treatment, methods conforming to the most progressive and enlightened standards of the day. I. EARLY CARE FOR THE INTELLECTUALLY DISABLED. Care for those with intellectual disability in the 1930s was founded in events of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Moral treatment developed for the humane care of the insane in the 1800s was 3 thought also applicable to the intellectually disabled. Its advocates believed that patients had a better chance of recovery if treated like a human child rather than like an animal. (Carron, 2012) In 1848, the first institution in the United States for training “feebleminded indigent youths” was established in Massachusetts at the inspiration of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe who had visited moral training institutions in Europe. California founded its first “institution for the feebleminded” in 1883. By 1917, all but four states were making some institutional provision for those with intellectual disability. (See Noll and Trent, 2004) The new moral educational techniques held great hope as a treatment and even a cure for intellectual disability; in any case, the person was protected from abuse by society. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, disappointment in the failure of moral treatment to cure intellectual disability and new discoveries based on the science of the period changed the rationale for their isolation and treatment. Instead of protecting the intellectually disabled from society it became necessary to protect society from them. II. THE RISE OF SOCIAL DARWINISM AND EUGENICS Darwin's theories of biological evolution and survival of the fittest were widely disseminated in the latter part of the nineteenth century. (Stern, 2015) In 1883 Sir Francis Galton in England took the concepts of biological evolution and survival of the fittest and applied them to the human race. On the basis of Darwinism applied to humans, that is, Social Darwinism, he proposed to improve the genetic quality of human populations by eliminating genetic groups judged to be inferior and increasing genetic groups judged to be superior. He coined the term Eugenics to name this new science of controlled human breeding. Social Darwinists thought that the "unfit," of human society were paupers, criminals, the insane, prostitutes, and those with intellectual disability. Curiously, Galton deemed English aristocracy as the most superior. (Haller, 1963) Several advancements in science seemed to support the need for eugenics. Rediscovered in 1900, principles of heredity based on Mendel’s study of peas were used to show that undesirable traits in humans passed from one generation to the next in permanent, irrevocable genetic design, a claim that was substantiated by Henry Goddard’s The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble- Mindedness, 1912, and The Hill Folk; Report On a Rural Community of Hereditary Defectives by Danielson and Davenport, (1912) In 1906, a test for measuring intelligence developed by Theodore Simon and Alfred Binet in France was brought to the United States in 1912 by Henry Goddard. He arranged for its translation into English and used it at the New Jersey Training School for Feebleminded Boys and Girls at Vineland, New Jersey. (Ayres, 1911) The 1916 Simon-Binet test was quickly accepted by many as a "real" measure of an individual's inborn mental capability. Experimental testing of special groups, such as immigrants, paupers, criminals, prostitutes and the insane and those with intellectual disability as well as army recruits during the First World War led to the revelation that there were far more people with below “normal" intelligence than previously suspected, with a much higher proportion of them among society's "unfit" than in the general population. In the scientific community and the press, the relationship between cause and effect was soon established: the “unfit” were so because of their inferior intelligence. (Gregory, 2004). A. The Menace of the Feebleminded 4 These newfound theories were the impetus for a wave of alarm to sweep the country. The press and the public expressed fear that the quality of the genetic pool of the United States was being lowered by the indiscriminate “allowing of foreign elements to immigrate to our shores -- immigrants who did not represent the average type of mental ability even in their own countries” (Inskeep, 1926). The reproduction rate of the “moron” group -- paupers, immigrants, criminals, and so on was believed to be far greater than the reproduction rate of the middle and upper classes, and it was feared that they would eventually far outnumber the others (Popenoe, 1938). “Unchecked feeblemindedness,” the root of social evils, would soon become the burden of civilization. These views were popularized by a publicity campaign of the National Committee on Provision for the Feebleminded in 1916, during a period later called "The Alarmist Stage." (Doll, 1928) In 1912, when people from many parts of the world were entering the United States in great numbers, Henry Goddard sent a team of specialists
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Race and Membership in American History: the Eugenics Movement
    Race and Membership in American History: The Eugenics Movement Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation, Inc. Brookline, Massachusetts Eugenicstextfinal.qxp 11/6/2006 10:05 AM Page 2 For permission to reproduce the following photographs, posters, and charts in this book, grateful acknowledgement is made to the following: Cover: “Mixed Types of Uncivilized Peoples” from Truman State University. (Image #1028 from Cold Spring Harbor Eugenics Archive, http://www.eugenics archive.org/eugenics/). Fitter Family Contest winners, Kansas State Fair, from American Philosophical Society (image #94 at http://www.amphilsoc.org/ library/guides/eugenics.htm). Ellis Island image from the Library of Congress. Petrus Camper’s illustration of “facial angles” from The Works of the Late Professor Camper by Thomas Cogan, M.D., London: Dilly, 1794. Inside: p. 45: The Works of the Late Professor Camper by Thomas Cogan, M.D., London: Dilly, 1794. 51: “Observations on the Size of the Brain in Various Races and Families of Man” by Samuel Morton. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences, vol. 4, 1849. 74: The American Philosophical Society. 77: Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, Charles Davenport. New York: Henry Holt &Co., 1911. 99: Special Collections and Preservation Division, Chicago Public Library. 116: The Missouri Historical Society. 119: The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1882; John Singer Sargent, American (1856-1925). Oil on canvas; 87 3/8 x 87 5/8 in. (221.9 x 222.6 cm.). Gift of Mary Louisa Boit, Julia Overing Boit, Jane Hubbard Boit, and Florence D. Boit in memory of their father, Edward Darley Boit, 19.124.
    [Show full text]
  • ES Gosney Papers and Records of the Human
    http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2h4n98gb No online items Register of the E. S. Gosney Papers And Records Of The Human Betterment Foundation, 1880-1945 Processed by David A. Valone and Jennifer Stine; machine-readable finding aid created by Michael C. Conkin Archives California Institute of Technology 1200 East California Blvd. Mail Code 015A-74 Pasadena, CA 91125 Phone: (626) 395-2704 Fax: (626) 793-8756 Email: [email protected] URL: http://archives.caltech.edu © 1998 California Institute of Technology. All rights reserved. 1 Register of the E. S. Gosney Papers And Records Of The Human Betterment Foundation, 1880-1945 Archives California Institute of Technology Pasadena, California Contact Information: Archives California Institute of Technology 1200 East California Blvd. Mail Code 015A-74 Pasadena, CA 91125 Phone: (626) 395-2704 Fax: (626) 793-8756 Email: [email protected] URL: http://archives.caltech.edu Processed by: David A. Valone and Jennifer Stine Date Completed: October 1995; Updated July 1998 Encoded by: Michael C. Conkin © 1998 California Institute of Technology. All rights reserved. Descriptive Summary Title: E. S. Gosney Papers And Records Of The Human Betterment Foundation, Date (inclusive): 1880-1945 Creator: Gosney, E. S. (Ezra Seymour), 1855-1942. Extent: Linear feet: 28 Repository: California Institute of Technology. Archives. Pasadena, California 91125 Language: English. Access Collection is open for research, except: files in Section VI and others containing personal information on patients. Application for access to restricted portions of the collection should be addressed to the Caltech Archivist with a research justification. Publication Rights Copyright has not been assigned to the California Institute of Technology Archives.
    [Show full text]
  • Platt on Eugenics.Indd
    Lessons of the Eugenics Movement 1 Testimony of Dr. Tony Platt To California Senate Judiciary Committee, June 24, 2003, Regarding Senate Resolution No. 20 — Relative to Eugenics Tony Platt INCE THE SPRING OF 2002, STATE GOVERNMENTS IN VIRGINIA, OREGON, and South Carolina have published statements of apology to tens of thousands of patients, mostly poor women, who were sterilized against their will in Sstate hospitals between the 1900s and 1960s. In March 2003, Governor Davis and Attorney General Lockyer added their regrets for the injustices committed in the name of “race betterment.” Now, the California Senate is considering a resolution, authored by Senator Dede Alpert (D-San Diego), that “expresses profound regret over the stateʼs past role in the eugenics movement” and “urges every citizen of the state to become familiar with the history of the eugenics movement, in the hope that a more educated and tolerant populace will reject any similar abhorrent pseudoscientific movement should it arise in the future.” What might such a history lesson teach us? That the eugenics movement, which emerged in Europe and the United States around the turn of the last century, was rooted in assumptions about the existence of distinct biological races, with “Anglo-Saxon” societies as the civilizing bedrock of modernity. Supporters of eugenics advocated policies of segregation and apartheid to protect the “well born” from contamination. Its leaders believed that a variety of social successes (wealth, political leadership, intellectual discoveries) and social problems (poverty, illegitimacy, crime, mental illness, and unemployment) could be traced to inherited, biological attributes associated with “racial temperament.” Is there any other conclusion, asked a popular 1926 textbook (co-authored by a TONY PLATT ([email protected]), emeritus professor of social work, California State University Sacramento, is a member of the Editorial Board of Social Justice and author of books and articles on U.S.
    [Show full text]
  • The Viceroyalty of Miami: Colonial Nostalgia and the Making of An
    Florida International University FIU Digital Commons FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations University Graduate School 7-1-2016 The iceV royalty of Miami: Colonial Nostalgia and the Making of an Imperial City John K. Babb Florida International University, [email protected] DOI: 10.25148/etd.FIDC000725 Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd Part of the Cultural History Commons, Latin American History Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Babb, John K., "The icV eroyalty of Miami: Colonial Nostalgia and the Making of an Imperial City" (2016). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2598. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2598 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the University Graduate School at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY Miami, Florida THE VICEROYALTY OF MIAMI: COLONIAL NOSTALGIA AND THE MAKING OF AN IMPERIAL CITY A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in HISTORY by John K. Babb 2016 To: Dean John Stack Green School of International and Public Affairs This dissertation, written by John K. Babb, and entitled The Viceroyalty of Miami: Colonial Nostalgia and the Making of an Imperial City, having been approved in respect to style and intellectual content, is referred to you for judgment. We have read this dissertation and recommend that it be approved. ____________________________________ Victor Uribe-Uran ____________________________________ Alex Stepick ____________________________________ April Merleaux ____________________________________ Bianca Premo, Major Professor Date of Defense: July 1, 2016.
    [Show full text]
  • EUGENICS in CALIFORNIA, 1896-1945 by Joseph W. Sokolik
    LEADING THE RACE: EUGENICS IN CALIFORNIA, 1896-1945 by Joseph W. Sokolik, B.A. A thesis submitted to the Graduate Council of Texas State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts with a Major in History December 2013 Committee Members: Rebecca Montgomery, Chair Anadelia Romo Jeffrey Helgeson COPYRIGHT by Joseph W. Sokolik 2013 FAIR USE AND AUTHOR’S PERMISSION STATEMENT Fair Use This work is protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States (Public Law 94-553, section 107). Consistent with fair use as defined in the Copyright Laws, brief quotations from this material are allowed with proper acknowledgment. Use of this material for financial gain without the author’s express written permission is not allowed. Duplication Permission As the copyright holder of this work I, Joseph W. Sokolik, authorize duplication of this work, in whole or in part, for educational or scholarly purposes only. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to everyone in the Department of History at Texas State University-San Marcos for all of their support and guidance throughout my entire graduate career. To all of my professors, thank you for your constant inspiration. First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr. Rebecca Montgomery for her guidance and advice throughout the writing process. To Dr. Montgomery, Dr. Mary Brennan, Dr. James McWilliams, Dr. Jeff Helgeson, Dr. Ana Romo, Dr. Paul Hart, Dr. Angela Murphy, and Dr. Jesús Francisco de la Teja—you are the best group of educators out there and have deepened my appreciation and love for history, a task that I did not believe possible just a few years ago.
    [Show full text]
  • Eugenic Sterilization in California in the 1920S and 30S: the Human Betterment Foundation’S Study on the Effects of Sterilization
    Eugenic Sterilization in California in the 1920s and 30s: The Human Betterment Foundation’s Study on the Effects of Sterilization Meaghan Watters History of Science, History of Medicine Advisor: Prof. Daniel Kevles April 2, 2012 Watters 2 Intro In 1899, one of the inmates at the Indiana State Reformatory for Boys—a little boy from Missouri—reportedly complained to his doctor of excessive masturbation. He requested castration as the solution, but the attending physician Dr. Harry Sharp hesitated to perform what he referred to as the “mutilation.”1 Instead, he chose to perform a vasectomy, even though he didn’t have a specific warrant of the law. After the procedure, the child stopped masturbating, and his advisors claimed that his mind was better and he made better progress in school. After his success, others began requesting the operation as well, resulting in Sharp presenting a paper to the American Medical Association in 1901 and submitting an article to the New York Medical Journal in 1902 outlining the benefits of sterilization for the patient.2 The article claimed that post-operation patients “improve mentally and physically … and the will becomes stronger.”3 From there, it was only a short amount of time before Indiana passed the first compulsory sterilization law in 1907. Other states soon followed suit, and the purpose of sterilization became compounded, as it began to be performed for the good of society as well as for the good of the patient. Sterilization was quickly taken up by the eugenics movement as a major instrument to prevent the decline of the quality of the American population.
    [Show full text]
  • An Online Feminist Journal Spring 2013: Vol.4, Issue 1 96 Women
    MP: An Online Feminist Journal Spring 2013: Vol.4, Issue 1 Women ‘Waking Up’ and Moving the Mountain: The Feminist Eugenics of Charlotte Perkins Gilman By Susan Rensing The 1910s were a period of tremendous visibility of eugenic ideas throughout the United States, in large part because of Progressive Era enthusiasm for scientific solutions to social problems. Americans were concerned with how to improve the hereditary quality of the human race and eugenics was the science dedicated to pursuing that goal. Parallel to this expansion of eugenics in the public sphere was a revitalization of the women’s movement that began to be called ‘feminism.’ Both eugenics and feminism were being constructed and expanded in the 1910s, and the interaction between the two ideologies is the focus of this paper. On the one hand, eugenicists attempted to use eugenics to shape the scope of feminism, and limit the roles of women to motherhood and breeding for racial betterment, what the British doctor and widely read science writer Caleb Saleeby termed “eugenic feminism.”1 On the other hand, “the foremost American female feminist” during this period, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, argued that the new age of women’s equality would shape eugenics, not the other way around, and articulated a feminist eugenics that separated breeding from motherhood.2 Feminist eugenics, as Gilman envisioned it, constrained the choices available to men by subverting their role as sexual selectors, taking away their economic power in marriage, and targeting the sexual double standard. Eugenic
    [Show full text]
  • Six Blacks from Home: Childhood, Motherhood, And
    PATRICK J. RYAN “Six Blacks from Home”: Childhood, Motherhood, and Eugenics in America In August 1919, a settlement house worker in Columbus, Ohio, filed a complaint in juvenile court against a seven-year-old girl whom I will call “Marie.” The complaint read, “Marie runs the streets continually. She is very irregular in her attendance at school, and is as dirty as a pig. She has been found in a lumber yard with a negro, and it was alleged by her asso- ciates that he raped her there. She goes into stores and begs.” According to the surviving records, Marie’s “truancies from home” alerted settle- ment workers to the case. As a young child she reportedly began staying out late at night and loitering in the company of men and boys, and was threatened with being put out of the house when she was found alone with the African American man. By 1928, after Marie became an unwed mother at the age of sixteen, and had spent nine years in and out of child welfare institutions, a summary report contained the interesting typographical error that Marie’s young life had strayed a distance of “six blacks from home.” As incidental as slipping “blocks” into “blacks” may have been in one sense, it captured a powerful truth. Marie violated key boundaries of sexual, gender, and racial purity that made a woman a candidate for respectable motherhood, and she paid dearly for these transgressions.1 When Marie and her mother entered the juvenile justice system for the first time in 1919, they denied that she had had sexual relations of any kind.
    [Show full text]
  • A Study of the United States Influence on German Eugenics
    East Tennessee State University Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University Electronic Theses and Dissertations Student Works 8-2020 A Study of the United States Influence on German ugenics.E Cameron Williams East Tennessee State University Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.etsu.edu/etd Part of the European History Commons, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Williams, Cameron, "A Study of the United States Influence on German ugenics.E " (2020). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 3781. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/3781 This Thesis - Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Works at Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A Study of the United States Influence on German Eugenics _________________________ A thesis presented to the faculty of the Department of History East Tennessee State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in History ______________________ by Cameron Williams August 2020 _____________________ Stephen Fritz, Chair Daryl Carter Tom Lee Keywords: Eugenics, United States, Racial Hygienists, Racial, Law, Health ABSTRACT A Study of the United States Influence on German Eugenics by Cameron Williams This thesis is a study of the influence and effects that the United States had upon Germany from the rise of eugenics to its fall following the end of World War II. There are three stages to this study.
    [Show full text]
  • The Public Debate and Legislative Battle Over Compulsory Eugenic Sterilization in Louisiana, 1924-1932
    Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2017 A Vast Injustice: The Public eD bate and Legislative Battle veo r Compulsory Eugenic Sterilization in Louisiana, 1924 -- 1932 Adelaide Hair Barr Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Barr, Adelaide Hair, "A Vast Injustice: The ubP lic Debate and Legislative Battle vo er Compulsory Eugenic Sterilization in Louisiana, 1924 -- 1932" (2017). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 4490. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/4490 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. “A VAST INJUSTICE” THE PUBLIC DEBATE AND LEGISLATIVE BATTLE OVER COMPULSORY EUGENIC STERILIZATION IN LOUISIANA, 1924-1932 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in Partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of History by Adelaide Hair Barr B.A. Louisiana State University, 2004 M.A. Southeastern Louisiana University, 2010 August 2017 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would have not been able to complete this project without the guidance, assistance, and support from so many. First, I would like to thank my major professor and director of this dissertation, Gaines M. Foster. His constructive critiques of my work made it better than I could have ever imagined.
    [Show full text]
  • Applied Eugenics
    CHAPTER VII ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE EUGENICS MOVEMENT "Eugenics," wrote Francis Galton, who founded the science and coined the name, "is the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally." The definition is universally accepted, but by its use of the word "study" it defines a pure science, and the present book is concerned rather with the application of such a science. Accepting Galton's definition, we shall for our purposes slightly extend it by saying that applied eugenics embraces all such measures, in use or prospect either individually or collectively, as may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations of man, either physically or mentally, whether or not this was the avowed purpose. It is one of the newest of sciences. It was practically forced into existence by logical necessity. It is certainly here to stay, and it demands the right to speak, in many cases to cast the deciding vote, on some of the most important questions that confront society. The science of eugenics is the natural result of the spread and acceptance of organic evolution, following the publication of Darwin's work on The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, in 1859. It took a generation for his ideas to win the day; but then they revolutionized the intellectual life of the civilized world. Man came to realize that the course of nature is regular; that the observed sequences of events can be described in formulas which are called natural laws; he learned that he could achieve great results in plant and animal breeding by working in harmony with these laws.
    [Show full text]
  • UC Santa Cruz Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    UC Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Testing for Race: Stanford University, Asian Americans, and Psychometric Testing in California, 1920-1935 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9p87m1cv Author Palter, David Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ Testing for Race: Stanford University, Asian Americans, and Psychometric Testing in California, 1920-1935 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements of the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in HISTORY by David Palter March 2014 The Dissertation of David Palter is approved: _______________________ Professor Dana Frank, Chair _______________________ Professor Alice Yang _______________________ Professor Noriko Aso _______________________ Professor Ronald Glass ___________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by David Palter 2014 Table of Contents Abstract iv Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 Chapter 1: 42 Strange Bedfellows: Lewis Terman and the Japanese Association of America, 1921-1925 Chapter 2: 87 The Science of Race Chapter 3: 126 The Test and the Survey Chapter 4: 162 Against the Tide: Reginald Bell’s Study of Japanese-American School Segregation in California Chapter 5: 222 Solving the “Second-Generation Japanese Problem”: Charles Beard, the Carnegie Corporation, and Stanford University, 1926-1934 Epilogue 283 Bibliography 296 iii Abstract Testing for Race: Stanford University, Asian Americans, and Psychometric Testing in California, 1920-1935 David Palter Between 1920 and 1935, researchers at Stanford University administered thousands of eugenic tests of intelligence and personality traits to Chinese-American and Japanese-American children in California’s public schools.
    [Show full text]